Too Cool Big Chill race report - now with (a) pictures!

This past weekend was the Big Chill adventure race out at Bastrop State Park. I raced with the Werewolves, my regular Texas team. The team was Paul, Tom and Ashley. I have raced with Tom and Paul many times, but it was my first time racing with Ashely. I've always liked her, having met her at many races, so I was looking forward to racing with her.

The race started at 8 am on Saturday morning, with all the teams being loaded on buses and instructed to put on blindfolds. We had dropped our bikes off at a nearby (15 miles away) mountain bike ranch, as well as dropping off the boats at the lake, so we weren't sure where they would be taking us, although we assumed it would be near the bike drop. We drove for many 20 or 25 minutes (it's very hard to judge time when you're blindfolded and in a moving bus). When we unloaded, we were at an intersection of two streets in a small neighbourhood. We had maps of the region and a few trekking points to find before getting to the bike drop. But we didn't know where we were on the map to start. We had to figure that out by wandering and matching up the streets to the small neighbourhood on the map. It didn't take long to figure out, to find the few points and get to our bike. I would say we were mid-pack getting to the bikes.



The bike leg took place at the Ranch, with a bike drop to pick up a few points on foot before continuing on the bike. It was a relatively uneventful leg except for the mud. It has been very wet around here lately, and the soil at the ranch is clay, which means it sticks. Fortunately, our bikes were mostly working, which was not everyone's experience. We saw and heard of many bike casualties. The route was specified by what trails to take until the trekking points. We did make an error on one point by going the wrong way up a draw and losing about 30 minutes. Otherwise, we felt we were doing pretty well, having passed many teams on the trails.

From the ranch, we rode the bikes back towards Bastrop. We had to pick up a few points on the roads, and then drop the bikes to get some trekking and a ropes point. This leg, combined with the first leg ended up longer than we expected, and we ended up running out of food and water around the time of the bike drop. The whole section ended up taking about 7 hours, quite a bit more than we'd planned for. The navigation for the trekking points was pretty good, except for a detour up the wrong draw, but otherwise, we were trucking along. The rope section was a traverse across a deep valley - not a zip line, since we had to pull ourselves across while avoiding hitting our heads on the trees in the way. It's really nice to have a ropes section in a race, even if it's not a long race, since it's always fun and good to look forward to. We finished up the trekking points, returned to our bikes, and gratefully headed to the TA to fill up on food and water.

The next leg was a scoot, just a short loop around the park road while looking for answers to various clues. I hate scooting sections, mostly because they are always far more effort than I seem to think they should be. We did get lots of great comments from other park users who were curious why grown adults in their 30s and 40s were scooting around the park.

After the scoot we were off for trekking and paddling points. We could do the trek before or after the paddle. Since daylight was running short, we decided to get the trekking points while we still had light. The nav was dead on for all four points, and we headed quickly to the boats. It had been a pretty nice day, except for some light mist in the morning, but that had burnt off and it was a sunny, calm day. Someone on the team mentioned how it would be a nice, calm night for a paddle. Ooops.

As we were walking to the boat drop (a few miles down a paved road), we started to notice the wind in the trees, and when we got to the lake, there was a distinct breeze. Breeze is a nice way to describe the wind, which was kicking up the waves coming down the lake towards the boat put in. As we were just putting in, Team Backpacker was coming in, surfing along with the tailwind. They had set out with hardly any wind, and it had been building while they were out. They were about 2 hrs ahead of us at this point, and we were in a distant second. We launched into the nasty conditions and headed down the lake.

We had thought, when we were packing for the leg, that it was a calm night. We knew it would be cold, but we expected a dry paddle. This meant that we (well, Paul and I, at least) were underdressed. We got very wet from the waves crashing on the boat and the spray off the paddles. For one stretch, we were paddling as hard as we could, and we were barely holding our position, much less making headway. We eventually made it down the lake and found all four checkpoints before surfing back to the boat drop, freezing cold. While out on the lake, we were commenting on the fact that we hadn't seen anyone else out, even though another team was putting in right behind us. We found out when we got back to the boat drop that they had capsized, and the race directors decided not to let anyone else out on the lake because of the conditions. What this meant is that only two teams in our category (24 hr, four person) had done the paddle. So, we were a distant second, but we couldn't do any worse than 2nd.

We returned to TA, very cold and wet to head out of a bike leg. I was getting tired, but dry, warm clothes do amazing things to make you feel better. The leg seemed straightforward, with all the points within a few hundred meters of the trail or road. The navigation for the leg was great, with only one point on the opposite side of the road than the plotting indicated. We knocked out the leg very quickly and returned to TA, thinking we probably had one more leg to do before the end. It was about 1 am, I think. There was hot chocolate at the TA when we arrived, and it was one of the best things I've ever had at a race (I say that about something every race).

The last leg was a trek leg with seven points scattered through the park. Lots of ground to cover, but 7 hours to do it. We started on the point closest to the TA. We had some trouble since the vegetation in the area was very very thick, but after trying to attack it from a different point, Tom walked straight to it. The next point was waaaay out the park road, and after a long walk out there, we found Backpacker still looking for the point. We had seen them about 1.5 hours before on the park road, hiking out toward the point while we were coming in from the bike leg. At that point they were 2 hours ahead. But here they were, still looking for CP29.

Rankings in an adventure race are done by the number of checkpoints found. If two teams have the same number of CPs, then it is ranked by time. Since we and Backpacker were the only teams to do the paddle, all the other teams had four less checkpoints than we did. Backpacker was ready to give up on the CP29, but of course was concerned that if we found it, we would beat them. We chatted to them for awhile about their attempts to find it, and went looking for it ourselves with no luck. They decided to leave it and move on, and after a bit of looking, we did the same. I had a very good idea that some other teams wandering around the area had managed to find it, but we moved on anyway, knowing that Backpacker had skipped it as well.

The rest of the points went really well, with very good navigation. We were getting tired, and I, at least, fell asleep walking a few times. We saw Backpacker nearby at a few more checkpoints and decided we'd better run into the finish to try to catch them. We ended up coming in 3 minutes behind them and getting 2nd place.

In hindsight, we should have kept looking for CP29, but we were cold and tired. We'll remember to not stop racing next time (although, I think we've learned that lesson before). My teammates, as usual, were great and I really enjoyed racing with Ashley and chatting with her on the long bike and trek sections. It was a good race, fun and harder than expected (we finished in just under 22 hours. The race directors had predicted 18 for the lead teams). Robyn and Art do a fantastic job putting on these races, and I'll miss doing the rest of them this year.

I felt much better than I expected to, considering how tired I've been the past two weeks. I had no cramping, and although I felt more out of breath than I should have, I was really happy with how I felt. I don't think I ever really slowed the team down, which was my concern. Really, I had fully expected to have to drop out of the race due to cramps or exhaustion, but I did fell really good. Since it's my one real race for '07, I'm glad it went well.

This race report ended up super long. If you made it this far, I'm impressed. Sorry there are no pictures to break it up a bit. I'm going to post tomorrow about my thoughts on training/racing while pregnant. And I still owe a 7 week picture. I'm working on it.